Meaning & readings
five
On’yomi ゴ
Kun’yomi いつ、いつ.つ
Nanori い、さ、さつ、ち、ふ、み、め
Origin
The character 五 most likely represents the number five through a simple counting system. The two horizontal lines at the top and bottom appear to mark boundaries, while the vertical line and additional horizontal strokes in the middle represent the five units being counted. This approach of using strokes to show quantity is typical of how early number characters were formed, where the visual structure directly reflects the numerical value rather than depicting a concrete object.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 7
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #31 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+04E94